The IDF Educational Leadership Development Program is a unique program designed to enhance the professional identity of IDF officers and commanders, especially education officers, and their conception of their jobs. The program helps infuse content into the role of commanders as educators and furthers the development of the professional status of education in the IDF. Underlying the program are the concepts of vision and practice, educational identity and social sensitivity, and various aspects of the army, education, and Israeli society.

About the Program

The Mandel Leadership Institute has run the IDF Educational Leadership Development Program since 2005. The program is meant for officers in the IDF education system and for commanders, since the standard conception in the IDF is that commanders have an educational role. The aim of this unique program is to promote and help mold the professional identity of education officers and commanders as educators.

Identity-related issues are at the heart of the program, which meets for one full day a week throughout an entire academic year. Participants are forced to confront four dimensions of identity: their identity as Jews, as Israelis, as IDF commanders, and as educators.

The program comprises three areas of content: education, Jewish and Zionist identity, and the IDF and Israeli society. These areas are studied with a diverse methodology that includes lectures on theory, educational workshops, encounters, tours, discussions of moral dilemmas, and individual guidance for each participant.The Second Lebanon War highlighted several fundamental issues that will also be addressed by the program.

During their studies, teams of fellows will be required to develop programs addressing ethical and organizational aspects of the fundamental problems dealt with by the IDF and its education system. These include draft evasion, conscientious objection, motivation and lack of motivation to serve among various sectors in Israeli society, the role and involvement of the IDF in national tasks, and the significance (in terms of principles) of opening up all IDF units to women.

The classes take place at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Jerusalem. The third cohort, which is now starting the program, comprises 16 fellows who were selected in a joint screening process by the IDF and the Mandel Leadership Institute.